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Then he took in the damage.
The other vehicle looked like an ancient farm truck—a dilapidated one-tonner. If Joss’s sports car had been bigger it would have fared better, but now… His rear wheels were almost underneath his steering-wheel. The passenger compartment where Joss and his dog had sat not a minute before was a mangled mess.
Hell!
‘Stay,’ he told Bertram, and thanked the heavens that his dog was well trained. He didn’t want him any closer to the wreck than he already was. The smell of petrol was starting to be overpowering…
He had to reach the driver.
Damage aside, it was just as well his car had been where it was, Joss thought grimly. Coming with the speed it had, if Joss’s car hadn’t been blocking the way the truck would now be at the bottom of the river.
If anyone else came…
There was another car now on the other side of the river, and it also had its lights on high beam. Joss’s lights were still working—somehow. The lights merged eerily through the rain and there was someone on the opposite bank, waving wildly.
They’d all been lucky, Joss thought grimly. Except—maybe the driver of the truck.
The smell of petrol was building by the minute and the driver of the truck wasn’t moving. Hell, the truck’s engine was still turning over. It only needed a spark…
The truck door wouldn’t budge.
He hesitated for only a second, then lifted a rock and smashed it down on the driver’s window. Reaching in, he switched off the ignition. The engine died. That’d fix the sparks, he thought. It should prevent a fire. Please…
Were there injuries to cope with? The driver was absolutely still. Joss grabbed the handle of the crumpled door from the inside and tried to wrench it open. As he worked, he lifted his phone and hit the code for emergency.
‘The Iluka bridge is down,’ he said curtly as someone answered, still hauling at the door as he spoke. ‘There’s been a crash on the Iluka side. I need help—warning signs and flashing lights, powerful ones. We need police, tow trucks and an ambulance. I’m trying to get to the driver now. Stand by.’
‘If you won’t play bridge how about carpet bowls?’
‘That’s a good idea.’ At least it was active. Amy was climbing walls. ‘Let’s set it up.’
‘But you’ll play bridge with us tomorrow, won’t you, dear? If it doesn’t stop raining…’
Please, let it stop raining.
‘You’re wanted on the phone, Amy.’ It was Kitty calling from the office. ‘It’s Chris and she says it’s urgent.’
Hooray! Anything to get away from the carpet bowls—but the local telephonist was waiting and at the sound of her voice, Amy’s relief disappeared in an instant. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know.’ Chris was breathless with worry. ‘All I got was that the bridge is down. There’s been a crash and they want an ambulance. But, Amy, the ambulance has to come from Bowra on the other side of the river. If the bridge is down… If there’s a medical emergency here…’
Amy’s heart sank. Oh, no…
Iluka wasn’t equipped for acute medical needs. The nearest acute-care hospital was at Bowra. The nearest doctor was at Bowra! Bowra was only twenty miles down the road but if the bridge was down it might just as well be twenty thousand.
‘I don’t know any more,’ Chris told her. ‘There was just the one brief message and the caller disconnected. I’ve alerted Sergeant Packer but I thought…well, there’s nowhere else to take casualties. You might want to stand by.’
It was a woman and she was in trouble.
Joss managed to wrench the door open to find the driver slumped forward on the steering-wheel. Her hair was a mass of tangled curls, completely blocking his view. She was youngish, he thought, but he couldn’t see more, and when he placed a hand on her shoulder there was no response.
‘Can you hear me?’
Nothing. She seemed deeply unconscious.
Why?
He needed to check breathing—to establish she had an airway. He stooped, wanting to see but afraid to pull her head back. He needed a neck brace. If there was a fracture with compression and he moved her…
He didn’t have a neck brace and he had no choice. Carefully he lifted the curls away and placed his hands on the sides of her head. Then, with painstaking care, he lifted her face an inch from the wheel.
With one hand holding her head, cupping her chin with his splayed fingers, he used the other to brush away the hair from her mouth. Apart from a ragged slash above her ear he could feel no bleeding. Swiftly his fingers checked nose and throat. There was no blood at all, and he could feel her breath on his hand.
What was wrong?
The door must have caught her as it crumpled, he thought as he checked the cut above her ear. Maybe that had been enough to knock her out.
Had it been enough to kill her? Who knew? If there was internal bleeding from a skull compression then maybe…
She was twisted away from him in the truck, so all he could see was her back. He was examining blind. His hands travelled further, examining gently, feeling for trauma. Her neck seemed OK—her pulse was rapid but strong. Her hands were intact. Her body…
His hands moved to her abdomen—and stiffened in shock. He paused in disbelief but he hadn’t been mistaken. The woman’s body was vast, swollen to full-term pregnancy, and what he’d felt was unmistakable.
A contraction was running right through her, and her body was rigid in spasm.
The woman was in labour. She was having a baby!
‘Amy?’
‘Jeff.’ Jeff Packer was the town’s police sergeant—the town’s only policeman, if it came to that. He was solid and dependable but he was well into his sixties. In any other town he’d have been pensioned off but in Iluka he seemed almost young.
‘There’s a casualty.’ He said the word ‘casualty’ like he might have said ‘disaster’ and Jeff didn’t shake easily. Unconsciously Amy braced herself for the worst.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s a young woman. We’re bringing her in to you now.’
‘You’re bringing her here?’
‘There’s nowhere else to take her, Amy. The bridge is down. We’d never get a helicopter landed in these conditions and Doc here says her need is urgent.’
‘Doc?’
‘The bloke she ran into says he’s a doctor.’
A doctor… Well, thank heaven for small mercies. Amy let her breath out in something close to a sob of relief.
‘How badly is she hurt?’
‘Dunno. She’s unconscious and her head’s bleeding. We’re putting her into the back of my van now.’
‘Should you move her?’
‘Doc says we don’t have a choice. There’s a baby on the way.’
A baby.
Amy replaced the receiver and stood stunned. This was a nursing home! They didn’t have the staff to deliver babies. They didn’t have the skills or the facilities or…
She was wasting time. Get a grip, she told herself. An unconscious patient with a baby on the way was arriving any minute. What would she need?
She’d need staff. Skilled staff. And in Iluka…. What was the chance of finding anyone? There were two other trained nurses in town but she knew Mary was out at her mother’s and she didn’t have the phone on, and Sue-Ellen had been on duty all night. She’d only just be asleep.
She took three deep breaths, forcing herself to think as she walked back out to the sitting room.
Thinking, thinking, thinking.
The vast sitting room was built to look out to sea. Mid-morning, with no one able to go outside, it held almost all the home’s inhabitants. And they were all looking at her. They’d heard Kitty say the call was urgent and in Iluka urgent meant excitement.
Excitement was something that was sadly lacking in this town. These old people didn’t play carpet bowls from choice.
Hmm. As Amy looked at them, her idea solidified. This was the only plan possible.
‘I think,’ she said slowly, the solution to this mess turning over and over in her mind, ‘that I need to interrupt your carpet bowls. I think I need all hands on deck. Now.’
Fifteen minutes later, when the police van turned into the nursing home entrance, they were ready.
Jeff had his hand on his horn. Any of the home’s inhabitants who hadn’t known this was an emergency would know it now, but they were already well aware of it. They were waiting, so when the back of the van was flung wide, Joss was met by something that approached the reception he might have met at the emergency ward of the hospital he worked in.
There was a stretcher trolley rolled out, waiting, made up with mattress and crisp white linen. There were three men—one at each side of the trolley and one at the end. There was a woman with blankets, and another pushing something that looked blessedly—amazingly—like a crash cart. There was another woman behind…
Each and every one of them wore a crisp white coat and they looked exceedingly professional.
Except they also all looked over eighty.
‘What the…?’
He had barely time to register before things were taken out of his hands.
‘Charles, slide the trolley off the wheels—that’s right, it lifts off. Ian, that’s great. Push it right into the van. Push it alongside her so she can be lifted… Ted, hold the wheels steady….’
Joss glanced up from his patient. The efficient tones he was hearing weren’t coming from a geriatric. They came from the only one in the group who didn’t qualify.
She was a young woman, nearing thirty, he thought, but compared to her companions she was almost a baby. And she was stunning! She was tall and willow slim. Her finely boned face was tanned, with wide grey eyes that spoke of intelligence, and laughter lines crinkled around the edges that spoke of humour. Her glossy black hair was braided smoothly into a long line down her back. Dressed in a soft print dress with a white coat covering it, she oozed efficiency and starch and competence. And…
Something? It wasn’t just beauty, he thought. It was more…
‘I’m Amy Freye,’ she said briefly. ‘I’m in charge here. Can we move her?’
‘I… Yes.’ Somehow he turned his attention back to his patient. They’d thrown a rug onto the van floor for her to lie on. It wasn’t enough but it was the best they could do as there’d been no time to wait for better transport. The thought of delivering a distressed baby in the driving rain was impossible.
‘Wait for me.’ Amy leaped lightly into the van beside Joss. Her calm grey eyes saw and assessed, and she moved into action. She went to the woman’s hips and slid her hands underneath in a gesture that told Joss she’d done this many times before. Then she glanced at Joss, and her glance said she was expecting matching professionalism. ‘Lift with me. One, two, three…’
They moved as one and the woman slid limply onto the stretcher.
‘OK, fit the wheels to the base,’ the girl ordered of the two old men standing at the van door. ‘Lock it into place and then slide it forward.’
In one swift movement it was done. The stretcher was on its wheels and the girl was out of the van.
‘Take care of the dog, Lionel,’ she told an old man standing nearby, and Joss blinked in astonishment. The top triage nurses in city casualty departments couldn’t have handled things any better—and to even notice the dog… He opened his mouth to tell Bertram things were OK, but someone was handing towels to the man called Lionel, the old man was clicking his fingers and someone else was bringing a biscuit.
Bertram was in doggy heaven. Joss could concentrate on the woman.
‘This way,’ Amy was saying, and the stretcher started moving. Doors opened magically before her. The old men beside the stretcher pushed it with a nimbleness which would have been admirable in men half their age, and Joss was left to follow.
Where was he? As soon as the door opened, the impression of a bustling hospital ended. Here was a vast living room, fabulously sited with three-sixty-degree views of the sea. Clusters of leather settees were dotted with squashy cushions, shelves were crammed with books, someone was building a kite that was the size of a small room, there were rich Persian carpets…
There were old people.
‘Do we know who she is?’ Amy asked, and Joss hauled his attention back where it was needed.
‘No. There was nothing on her—or nothing that we could find. Sergeant Packer’s called in the plates—he should be able to get identification from the licence plates of the truck she was driving—but he hasn’t heard back yet.’
She nodded. She was stopping for nothing, pushing doors wide, ushering the stretcher down a wide corridor to open a final door…
‘This is our procedures room,’ she told Joss as she stood aside to let them past. ‘It’s the best we can do.’
Joss stopped in amazement.
When the police sergeant had told him the only place available was the nursing home he’d felt ill. To treat this woman without facilities seemed impossible.
But here… The room was set up as a small theatre. Scrupulously clean, it was gleaming with stainless-steel fittings and overhead lights. It was perfect for minor surgery, he realised, and his breath came out in a rush of relief. What lay before him started looking just faintly possible.
‘What—?’
But she was ahead of him. ‘Are you really a doctor?’ she asked, and he nodded, still stunned.
‘Yes. I’m a surgeon at Sydney Central.’ But he was focussed solely on the pregnant woman, checking her pupils and frowning. There didn’t seem a reason for her to be so deeply unconscious.
He wanted X-rays.
He needed to check the baby first, he thought. He had two patients—not one.
‘You can scrub through here.’ Amy’s face had mirrored his concern and she’d followed his gaze as he’d watched the last contraction ripple though her swollen abdomen. ‘Or…do you want an X-ray first?’
‘I have to check the baby.’ She was right. He needed to scrub before he did an internal examination.
‘I’ll check the heartbeat. The sink’s through here. Marie will help.’
